[time-nuts] Propagation using GPS for Timing

[Brooke Clarke]

Hi Chris:

For me the best way to see what propagation is doing is with some from of chirp receiver.
With the RCS-5 you get a plot of the height of the various layers in real time along with a signal quality metric for 
the path between you and the target chirp transmitter.
There are a number of other ways to get this data that do not involve a commercial chirp receiver.
http://www.prc68.com/I/RCS-5A.shtml

Since chirp transmissions cover 2 to 30 MHz you don't choose the transmitter based on frequency, rather you use it's 
start time.
That's best done using a GPS timing receiver for synchronization. There's a way to do that using a computer sound card 
where the GPS 1PPS goes into one channel and the audio from a (hopefully programmable) HF receiver into the other channel.

In some cases you can see a signal that's been all the way around the Earth one or more times.

I think this is also a great way to evaluate a receive antenna.

Have Fun,

Brooke Clarke
http://www.PRC68.com
http://www.end2partygovernment.com/2012Issues.html

Chris Albertson wrote:
> It's on my list of things to do.  I'm more interested in tracking the delay
> as a way to study radio propagation.